Abstract: Number representation and its development in human mind is one of the important topics in psychology. A series of theoretical and methodological advances have been made since 1970s. In this paper, studies investigating numerical competence in human infants are introduced briefly and two classes of models which have generally dominated current theories of numerical representation in human infants are discussed. Substantial experimental evidence suggests that infants possess an inherent mental mechanism for number. And this mechanism serves as a foundation for developing mathematical thought.

Key words: number representation, accumulator, object-file model, analog model